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The geometric mean of relative abundance indices : a biodiversity measure with a difference

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Buckland2011EcosphereES11_00186.pdf (4.419Mb)
Date
02/09/2011
Author
Buckland, Stephen Terrence
Studeny, Angelika Caroline
Magurran, Anne
Illian, Janine Baerbel
Newson, Stuart
Keywords
Biodiversity measure
Evenness
Geometric mean
Relative abundance
2010 Biodiversity Target
2020 Aichi Biodiversity Targets
QL Zoology
QA Mathematics
Metadata
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Abstract
The 2010 Biodiversity Target of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), set in 2002, which stated that there should be ‘a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss' by 2010, highlighted the need for informative and tractable metrics that can be used to evaluate change in biological diversity. While the subsequent Aichi 2020 targets are more wide-ranging, they also seek to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss. The geometric mean of relative abundance indices, G, is increasingly being used to examine trends in biological diversity and to assess whether biodiversity targets are being met. Here, we explore the mathematical and statistical properties of G that make it useful for judging temporal change in biological diversity, and we discuss its advantages and limitations relative to other measures. We demonstrate that the index reflects trends in both abundance and evenness, and that it is not prone to bias when detectability of individuals varies by species. We note that it allows data from different surveys to be combined to generate a composite index. However, the index exhibits high variance and unstable behaviour when rarely-recorded species are included in the analyses. Read More: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/ES11-00186.1
Citation
Buckland , S T , Studeny , A C , Magurran , A , Illian , J B & Newson , S 2011 , ' The geometric mean of relative abundance indices : a biodiversity measure with a difference ' , Ecosphere , vol. 2 , no. 9 , 100 . https://doi.org/10.1890/ES11-00186.1
Publication
Ecosphere
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1890/ES11-00186.1
ISSN
2150-8925
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright (c) 2011 the authors, published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits restricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and sources are credited. Available from http://www.esajournals.org
Description
This work is partly supported by the European Research Council
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3310

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